ESO-Enews #16: August 2010

1. PREVIEW OF PERIOD 87 CALL FOR OBSERVING PROPOSALS: MERGER OF SHORT PROGRAMMES CATEGORY AND CHANGES TO PROPOSAL FORM

This is an early announcement of changes to be introduced in the ESO observing proposal submission process for Period 87 (proposals to be submitted by 30 September 2010 for observations to be executed between 1 April and 30 September 2011). The Short and Normal Programme proposal types will henceforth be merged. The Short Programme type was used between Periods 80 and 86 to distinguish proposals requesting a total amount of observing time not exceeding 10 hours. It was judged that Short programmes added complexity for users with limited benefit for proposal reviewers: from Period 87 such proposals will have to be submitted as Normal Programmes.

Together with this change, a significantly revised proposal form will be introduced for Normal Programmes. This form will allow users a maximum of one page for presentation of the scientific rationale of their project and of its immediate objectives; a single additional page will be available for inclusion of figures and tables. The telescope and observing mode justifications, which until Period 86 were part of the description of the programme, will be moved to separate boxes. As in the past, the Normal Programme proposal template will have to be used also for GTO, ToO and Calibration Programmes. Furthermore, several minor changes will be introduced (e.g., printing format of the scheduling requirements and stricter verification of the timing constraints, introduction of a GTO duplication box), which will also affect the Large Programme proposal form. Overall the format of the latter will be mostly unchanged.

More details will be given in the Call for Proposals, to be released by 1 September.

2. CALL FOR PUBLIC SPECTROSCOPIC PROPOSALS

Following a workshop on spectroscopic surveys and a recommendation by the Science and Technology Committee (STC), ESO invites letters of intent for public spectroscopic surveys with ESO telescopes.

A public spectroscopic survey is understood to be an observing programme in which the investigators commit to produce and make publicly available, within a defined time, a fully reduced and scientifically usable data set that is likely to answer a major scientific question, and be of general use and of broad interest to the astronomical community. The raw data are public immediately. These surveys are envisaged to be massive observing programmes with up to 300 observing nights to be allocated over several semesters.

The deadline for letters of intent for public spectroscopic surveys is